Sea Day - Tuesday 8 October

It was not a good start to our day, being woken at 3:30 am by a text from 2 Degrees, thanking me for my payment for the month! My fault for not turning my phone off. I decided to read my email, knowing Dad would have had his operation overnight, and sure enough, there were a couple of Alison's amazing detailed updates - but with news that Dad was having problems with things not working as they should following the surgery, and even a trip back to hospital. Thank goodness I'll be home in a week.

Eventually we headed out to breakfast (the day revolves around food, as you can tell), and then made ourselves comfortable reading on Deck 15. I went to a photography seminar, put on by the ship's photographic staff, and it was quite good - I got some useful tips.

Murat had taken an order for a gluten free hamburger for my lunch, so we headed to the a la carte Da Vinci dining room for lunch at 12 pm. We each had some lovely leek and potato soup, followed by a burger. Phew...!

Jan and I had arranged to meet for Bridge at 1 pm, and 12 players showed up, making three tables. They played some kind of system called Party Bridge, so it was a bit confusing for us, but we enjoyed the four hands at our first table, then people rotated, and we went to another table. Well....... As we sat down, the man (husband) said to his wife "Do you want me to play or not?!" in a really shitty voice! Jan and I caught each other's eye, and settled down to play against the rudest man we have ever encountered at Bridge! His poor wife.... This went on for four hands of play. Boy, was he impatient with everyone, but he hadn't reckoned with us.... At one point I asked if they played at their Bridge Club, and he said he didn't any more (was probably banned!). Jan had him on a couple of times, questioning how he was wanting us to play, but then not following along himself. And then I played the cards in front of myself, but still in the centre of the table as he wanted, and he started to make one of his comments. So I looked him fiercely in the eye and told him sternly that I was doing exactly what he had said, and half expected him to storm off, but I think he was surprised into silence. We eventually swapped tables again (so we missed the chance to tell him to get a life...). The people at the table we moved to reported the same experience - they were incredulous. At the very end, this man disappeared (he had kept coming and going from his seat during the play, pacing around), and his poor, really lovely wife came over to us all to apologise for her husband "...who is a bit of a hot-head." My instant response to her was to say not to spend the rest of her life apologising for her husband!

There was another Captain's Circle presentation in the early evening, so David and I trundled along to try and win the lucky draw (no luck), and to at least get the two free drink vouchers they hand out...!

It was Formal Night again tonight, and we had our photo taken with our lovely dining team that look after us so well. Our Waiter, Jerry (from the Philippines); our Head Waiter (who sorts out the Gluten Free pre-order each evening) is Murat (from Istanbul); and our Wine Waiter is Blagica (from Romania). They had been very upset to miss us the previous night, when we had dined later than usual and then couldn't get into their section - they'd got everything ready and we hadn't shown up.

After dinner, we took advantage of everyone being at Formal Night, and David got all our laundry done while I worked on the blog. The laundry will have big queues as the cruise comes to an end.